By Pascale Potvin
I felt safe going to his house. It was our third date, after all. He had a cat; men with cats don’t want to scare their cats with any axe murders. Those things are loud.
“Oh, he loves you,” Darren even told me, as soon as the big orange baby rubbed its nose up against my ankle, next to the doormat. “He never, never does this, y’know.”
Three weeks into the relationship, of course, I ended up sobbing face-down on Darren’s memory-foam bed—as I’d done in front of many memories of men before.
“I don’t know if this is for me,” I had to tell him, between tear and tear. “I can’t pull myself out of my work... I think I want to do a Master’s over in Scotland.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Darren said—and from the way he was petting my hair, in those moments, I realized he might’ve not been that into me, either.
After a particularly loud exhale from my nose, the cat stood, too, and it pawed its way to the far corner of the bed.
“He’s a little overwhelmed by you right now,” Darren chuckled, a low jingle that reminded me of rocks stuck in a shoe. “But don’t worry. He still loves you. He loves you. You need to love him back, with all that you have, y’know. Give yourself to him now.”
Pascale Potvin is editor-in-chief of Wrongdoing Magazine. She is the author of EROTECAY (LUPERCALIA Press, 2021) and Folktales for the Diseased Individual (2021) and has placed work in Eclectica Magazine, Juked Magazine, Gingerbread House Magazine, BlazeVOX, Maudlin House, and many others. She has a BAH from Queen’s University. Find her at pascalepotvin.com or on Twitter.